Egg expertise

Eggs have been big news recently. Defra investigated alleged mislabelling, and we did a survey of salmonella in non-UK eggs. It’s no change to the Agency’s advice about cooking and storage.

The survey team here worked hard to get a representative sample of non-UK eggs, because we don’t know the retail sites selling them. Importers and market experts said they are mainly sold in London and the North West. We took samples from both areas. HM Revenue & Customs indicated the proportion from each country, so we adjusted our findings to get an overall estimate. This was more ‘order of magnitude’ than ‘decimal point correct’. Spain’s the worry area, with over 10% of eggs contaminated with salmonella. The overall estimate is nearer 3%, ten times higher than for UK eggs. Plenty to work on here, despite the difficulty of being sure about the exact figures. Any comments? Post them on this blog.